Apostle Islands Lakeshore

We’re at another commercial campground, but this is a far cry from our parking lot digs.

This is the Apostle Islands Area Campground, just south of Bayfield, WI and, as the name says, in the area of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. It is very nicely done.

We’re in the old part and the roads and sites are tighter, but we still have enough privacy…

and when you’re standing and look out the dinette window you can just see Lake Superior between the motorhome and the tree across the street. The land past the water is one of the islands. Nice enough.

Most of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore is out on the Apostle Islands and only reachable by boat. There is a little strip of land along the north side of the peninsula we are on that is also part of the National Park. The only national park camping is out on the islands, so we weren’t going there!

Saturday we took a drive up to the park visitor center on the north shore, about 30 minutes away. There was this very nice little marina there.

This is obviously a live-aboard sailor staying there for $15 a night. No electric, but he has a generator sitting out on the dock. He’ll need it, nights have been getting down to the upper 40’s lately.

It was only about 50 when we were there, cloudy and windy so we didn’t linger long.

We took the time to visit the display of the fishing boat, the Twilite.

We’ve seen a lot of fishing boats like this on the Great Lakes; they’re covered.

This display showed how they fish off a covered boat. The sides have sliding panels so they can open an area on whichever side they wish to pull in the net.

Today it was nicer, less wind, more sun, so we wanted to take a walk. I had found what sounded like a nice trail just a few miles away on the reservation of the Red Cliff Band of the Ojibways.

It was at Frog Bay Tribal National Park, the first Tribal National Park in the United States.

The trail started on a bridge across a ravine.

It was easy to follow…

and had just enough structure to protect you from mud and the forest from compaction. I liked the way they modified these fallen trees rather than removing them.

But best of all they had trees labeled in Anishinaabeg as well as English. Many of the signs were hand carved,

but some were printed signs with more information.

After a nice meander through the woods…

we came to the edge of the lake.

There was a sailboat out there among the islands.

The trail led to this nice little beach.

You could see a number of the Apostle Islands just offshore.

There was a bench and we sat and enjoyed the view for a bit and then looped back to the parking lot on a more direct dirt track. What a lovely discovery.